It has long been considered desirable to allow telephone subscribers as much control as possible in the processing of calls, thereby reducing the need for operators and enhancing the privacy of telephone communications. In particular, it is desirable for called parties to be able to control the disposition of calls directed to them. For example, the service known as call-forwarding allows a subscriber to control the diversion of calls to telephone stations other than the station at which the called party normally resides. A person locator service taught in Jordan and Weber U.S. Pat. No. 4,313,035 provides subscriber control of a host of other services.
In general, the arrangements described above allow a subscriber to make an update call to a data base to store a call completion status that will then direct the completion of calls directed to the subscriber. The arrangements described above are limited in that one call completion status is usually only useful while the subscriber is in one location. It is inconvenient to require the subscriber to update his status at the data base whenever the subscriber changes location.